Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

A man carries a civet while taking part in an animal welfare campaign ahead of the World Animal Day celebrations on October 4, in Banda Aceh on October 2, 2022. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

A man carries a child as he wades trough a flooded road following heavy rains in Strand, Western Cape, South Africa on September 25, 2023. (Photo by Esa Alexander/Reuters)

Water pools on top of a water lily leaf after rain at Benchakitti Forest Park in Bangkok, Thailand on September 27, 2023. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

Teachers, students and sympathizers take part in an anti-government protest in Budapest on March 15, 2023, to mark the 175th anniversary of the 1848-1849 Hungarian Civic Revolution and War of Independence. (Photo by Peter Kohalmi/AFP Photo)

A tourist lies down on the tomato and water soup that has formed on August 30, 2023 in Bunol, Spain. Spain's tomato throwing party in the streets of Bunol, Valencia brings together almost 20,000 people, with some 150,000 kilos of tomatoes thrown each year, this year with a backdrop of high food prices affected by Spain's historic drought. (Photo by Zowy Voeten/Getty Images)

This close-up image – of a Holi Festival celebrant in Vrindivan, India, coated in neon-colored powder – was submitted to National Geographic’s Your Shot in the last week of March. On April 1 we published it on our Daily News site, along with seven other bright scenes captured during the Hindu spring Festival of Colors. (Photo by Tinto Alencherry/National Geographic)

Photo taken on November 5, 2015 shows flood in Bento Rodrigues, a town in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, after a dam at a mining waste site burst early Thursday. An iron ore tailings dam in the southeast Brazilian state of Minas Gerais collapsed Thursday, killing at least 15 people, according to local media reports. (Photo by Agencia Estado/Xinhua Press/Corbis)